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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 35

Section II.—Natural Religion Indirectly Suggests, and Applies Her Inducements to the Observance of, a Rule of Action Very Pernicious to the Temporal Interests of Mankind

Section II.—Natural Religion Indirectly Suggests, and Applies Her Inducements to the Observance of, a Rule of Action Very Pernicious to the Temporal Interests of Mankind.

In inquiring what extraneous rules of conduct are likely to promise either posthumous pleasure, or security from posthumous pain, we are unable to perceive, at first, how the believer should be led to any preference or conclusion upon the subject. So completely are we destitute of evidence, that it seems presumptuous to select any one mode of conduct, or to exclude any other. Experience alone can announce to us what behaviour is attended with enjoyment or discomfort during this life; it is this guide alone who informs us that the taste of fruit will procure pleasure, or that contact with the fire will occasion pain, and if the trial had never been made, we should to this day have remained ignorant even of these trite and familiar facts. We could not have affirmed or denied anything about them. Suppose a species of fruit perfectly new to be discovered. If any one, before either he himself or some one else has tasted it, confidently pronounces that it is sweet and well flavoured, an assertion so premature and uncertified could be treated only with contempt. We should term it folly and presumption thus to prophesy the pleasure or pain consequent in this life upon any particular conduct, prior to any experimental test. Whence comes it then, that the same certificate, which is allowed to be our only safeguard here against the dreams and chimeras of fancy, should be dismissed as superfluous and unnecessary in our anticipations of posthumous pain and pleasure? If a man ignorant of medicine is unable to point out a course of life which shall, if pursued in England, preserve him from liability to the yellow fever when he goes to Jamaica, how much more boldness is required to prescribe page 19 a preparatory course against consequences still farther removed from the possibility of conjecture?

Rash, however, as such anticipations may seem to be, they have almost universally obtained reception, under some form or other. And it is highly important to trace the leading assumptions which have governed the prophecies of men on the subject of posthumous pain and pleasure—to detect those universal principles which never fail to stand out amidst an infinite variety of subordinate accompaniments.

Natural religion merely implants in a man the expectation of a posthumous existence, involving awards of enjoyment and suffering apportioned by an invisible Being. This we suppose it to assure and certify; beyond this, all is dark and undiscovered. But on a subject so dim and yet so terrible, the obtrusive conjectures of fancy will not be silenced, and she will proceed to particularize, and interpolate without delay. The character of the invisible Being in whose hands these fearful dispensations are lodged, will present the most plausible theme for her speculations. If his temper, and the actions with which he is pleased or displeased, can be once discovered, an apparent clue to the secret sentences of futurity will be obtained. He will gratify those whose conduct he likes; injure those whose behaviour is disagreeable to him. But what modes of conduct will he be supposed to approve or disapprove?

Before we proceed to unfold the principles which govern our suppositions regarding his temper, it may be important to point out, in a few words, the insufficient basis upon which all anticipations of future enjoyment or suffering are built, independent of revelation. The pains and pleasures of a posthumous life are under the dispensation of the invisible Being. But so also are the pains and pleasures of this life. You do not found any expectations regarding the latter upon any assumed disposition of their invisible Dispenser. You do not pacify your ignorance of those causes which may create a tendency to the yellow fever, by conjecturing that certain actions are displeasing to his feelings. Predictions founded upon such wretched surmise would indicate the meanest imbecility. Why then should page 20 such evidence be considered as sanctioning anticipations of posthumous awards, when the commonest experience will not allow it to be employed to interpret the dispensations of the very same Being in the present life? In estimating the chances of life and death, of health and disease, no insurer ever inquires whether the actions of the applicant have been agreeable or disagreeable to the Deity. And the reasoning, upon which the trial by ordeal rests, is regarded with unqualified contempt, implying, as it does, that this Being approves or detests modes of action, and that he will manifest these feelings by dispensations in this life, of favour or severity. Yet this is merely a consistent application of the very same shift, for superseding the necessity of experience, on which the posthumous prophecies of natural religion are founded.

In this life, however, it may be urged, there are laws of nature which the Deity cannot or will not interrupt. But why should there not also be posthumous laws of nature, discoverable only by experience of them, and inviolable to the same extent? The presumption unquestionably is, that there are such posthumous laws, and that we can no more predict, from a reference to the attributes of the Deity, the modes of acquiring pleasure and avoiding pain in a posthumous life, than we can in this.

Amidst the dimness and distance of futurity, however, reason is altogether struck blind, and we do not scruple to indulge in these baseless anticipations. The assumed character of the invisible Dispenser is the only ground on which fancy can construct her scale of posthumous promotion and disgrace. And thus the rule of action, to which natural religion will affix her inducements of future vengeance and remuneration, will be framed entirely upon the conceptions entertained regarding his character.

We thus find ourselves somewhat nearer to the object of the present inquiry, whether natural religion conduces to the happiness or misery of mankind during the present life. It appears that natural religion does not itself originate any rule of action whatever, and that the rule which it is supposed to second and enforce depends only upon conceptions of the temper of the Deity. If he is conceived to be perfectly beneficent—having no personal affections of his page 21 own, or none but such as are coincident with the happiness of mankind—patronising those actions alone which are useful, and exactly in the degree in which they are useful—detesting in a similar manner and proportion those which are hurtful—then the actions agreeable to him will be beneficial to mankind, and inducements to the performance of them will promote the happiness of mankind. If, on the other hand, he is depicted as unbeneficent—as having personal affections seldom coincident with human happiness, frequently injurious to it, and almost always frivolous and exactive—favouring actions which are not useful at all, or not in the degree in which they are useful—disapproving with the same caprice and without any reference to utility—then the course of action by which his favour is to be sought, will be more or less injurious to mankind, and inducements to pursue it will in the present life tend to the production of unhappiness.

From this alternative there can be no escape. According to the temper of the Being whom we seek to please, will be the mode of conduct proper for conciliating his favour. To serve the devil is universally considered as implying the most abhorrent and detestable behaviour.

If we consult the language in which mankind speak of the Deity, we shall be led to imagine that he is in their conception a being of perfect and unsullied beneficence, uniting in himself all that is glorious and all that is amiable. Such is the tendency and amount of the words which they employ. Strange, however, as the inconsistency may appear, it will not be difficult to demonstrate, that mere natural religion invariably leads its votaries to ascribe to their Deity a character of caprice and tyranny, while they apply to him, at the same moment, all those epithets of eulogy and reverence which their language comprises. This discrepancy between the actual and the pretended conception is an infallible result of the circumstances, and agreeable to the principles of human nature.

1. What are the fundamental data, as communicated by natural religion, respecting the Deity, from which his temper and inclinations are to be inferred? A power to which we can assign no limits—an agency which we are unable to comprehend or frustrate—such are the original attributes page 22 from which the disposition of the possessor is to be gathered.

Now the feeling which excessive power occasions in those who dwell under its sway, is extreme and unmixed fear. This is its appropriate and never-failing effect, and he who could preserve an undisturbed aspect in the face of a power against which he knew of no protection, and which might destroy him in an instant, would justly be extolled as a man of heroic firmness. But what is the temper of mind which fear presupposes in the object which excites it? A disposition to do harm. Now a disposition to do harm, conjoined to the power of effecting it at pleasure, constitutes the very essence of tyranny. Examine the fictitious narratives respecting men of extraordinary strength. You will find a Giant or a Cyclops uniformly pourtrayed as cruel in the extreme, and delighted with the scent of human blood. Such are the dispositions which the human fancy naturally imagines as guiding the employment of irresistible might. Our terrors (as Father Malebranche remarks) justify them-selves, by suggesting appropriate persuasions of impending evil, and compel us to regard the possessor of unlimited powers as a tyrant.

The second characteristic of the Deity is an unknown and incomprehensible agency. Now an incomprehensible mode of behaviour, not reducible to any known principles, is in human affairs termed caprice, when confined to the trifling occurrences of life; insanity, when it extends to important occasions. The capricious or the insane are those whose proceedings we cannot reconcile with the acknowledged laws of human conduct—those whose conduct defies our utmost sagacity of prediction. They are incomprehensible agents endued with limited power. The epithets capricious, insane, incomprehensible, are perfectly convertible and synonymous.

Let experience now teach us the feelings with which mankind usually regard the mad, the wayward, and the unfathomable course of proceeding among themselves. They laugh at the caprices of a child; they tremble at the incoherent speech and gestures of a madman. Every one shrinks with dismay from the presence of the latter; the laws instantly enclose his body, and thrust upon it the page 23 invincible manacles of matter, since no known apprehension will act as a sufficient coercive upon his mind. Caprice and insanity, when accompanied even with the limited strength of a man, excite in us the keenest alarm, which is only heightened by the indefinite shape of the coming evil.

But let us suppose this object of our terror to be still farther strengthened. What if we arm the incomprehensible man with a naked sword! What if we figure him, like the insane Orlando of Ariosto, roaming about with an invulnerable hide, and limbs insensible to the chain! What if, still farther, he be intrusted with the government of millions, seconded by irresistible legions who stand ready at his beck! Can the utmost stretch of fancy produce any picture so appalling, as that of a mad, capricious, and incomprehensible Being exalted to this overwhelming sway? Yet this terrific representation involves nothing beyond surpassing might, wielded by one whose agency is unfathomable. And these are the two attributes, the alliance of which, in a measure still more fearful and unlimited, constitutes the Deity, as pourtrayed by natural religion.

So complete is this identity between incomprehensible conduct and madness, that amongst early nations, the madman is supposed to be under the immediate inspiration and control of the Deity, whose agency is always believed to commence where coherent and rational behaviour terminates.

But the Deity (it will be urged) treats us with favour and kindness, and this may suffice to remove our apprehensions of him. I reply, that the most valuable gift could never efface them, while the proceedings of the donor continued to be entirely inconsistent and unintelligible. It is the very essence of caprice and madness, that present behaviour constitutes no security whatever for the future. Our disquietude for the future must therefore remain as oppressive as before, and can never be relieved by these occasional gusts of transient good-humour. As few men hope, and almost every one fears, in cases where no assured calculation can be framed, it is obvious that this irregular favouritism would still leave us in all the restlessness of suspense and uncertainty.

The actual conception, therefore, which mankind will form of the Deity, from the consideration of those original data which unassisted natural religion promulgates con- page 24 cerning him, seems now to be sufficiently determined. He will not be conceived as designing constant and unmixed evil, for otherwise his power would carry it into effect; nor, for the same reason, as meditating universal and unceasing good. While there exists good in the universe, such a power cannot be wielded by perfect malevolence; while there exists evil, it cannot be directed by consummate benevolence.1 Besides, either of these two suppositions would destroy the attribute of incomprehensibility and would substitute in their stead a consecutive and intelligible system of action. The Deity therefore will be conceived as fluctuating between the two; sometimes producing evil, sometimes good, but infinitely more as an object of terror than of hope. His changeful and incomprehensible inclinations will be supposed more frequently pernicious than beneficial to mankind, and the portrait of a capricious tyrant will thus be completed.

2. Unamiable, however, and appalling as this conception may actually be, it is equally undeniable that no language, page 25 except that of the most devoted reverence and eulogy, will ever be employed in describing or addressing the Deity. To demonstrate this, it will be necessary to revert to the origin of praise and blame.

Praise is the expression of goodwill and satisfaction towards the person who has occasioned us a certain pleasure. It intimates a readiness on our part to manifest this goodwill by some farther repayment. It supposes the performance of a service which we have neither the right to expect nor the means of exacting. We bestow it in order to evince to the performer of the service and to the public in general, that we are not insensible to the favour received, and that we are disposed to view all who thus benefit us with peculiar complacency. Our praise therefore is destined to operate as a stimulus to the repetition of that behaviour by which we profit.

Blame, on the contrary, is the signal of dissatisfaction and wrath against the person who has caused us pain. It implies a disposition which would be gratified by inflicting injury upon him. It proclaims to him, and to every one else, our sense of the hurt, and the perils prepared for all who treat us in a similar manner. And we design, by means of it, to frighten and deter every one from conduct noxious to our welfare.

Such is the origin and such the intention of the language of encomium and dispraise. Each is a species of sanction, vested in the hands of every individual, and employed by him for his own benefit; the former remuneratory, and destined to encourage the manifestation of kindness towards him; the latter punitory, and intended to prevent injurious treatment.

Having thus unfolded the nature of praise and censure, it will not be difficult to explain the laws which govern their application; and to separate the circumstances in which a man will praise, from those in which he will blame.

Our employment of the punitory sanction, or of blame, is in exact proportion to our power; our employment of the remuneratory sanction, or of praise, is in a similar manner proportional to our weakness.

The man of extraordinary power, who possesses unlimited page 26 disposal of the instruments of terror, has not the slightest motive to praise. His blame, the herald and precursor of impending torture, is abundantly sufficient to ensure conformity to his will. The remuneratory sanction is in its nature comparatively feeble and uncertain; the punitory, when applied in sufficient magnitude, is altogether infallible and omnipotent. He who possesses an adequate command of the latter, will never condescend to make use of the former. He will regard himself as strictly entitled to the most unqualified subservience on the part of those whom he might in an instant plunge into excruciating torments. If he partially waives the exercise of this prerogative, he will consider it as an undeserved extension of mercy.

On the other hand, the man without strength or influence, who cannot hurt us even if he wished it, is cut off from the employment of the punitory sanction. His blame is an impotent murmur, threatening no future calamity, and therefore listened to with indifference. It would, under these circumstances, revolt and irritate us, or else provoke our derision. In either case, it would only render us less disposed to conform to his will, and policy therefore will induce him to repress it altogether. His sole method of influencing our behaviour is by a prodigal employment of the remuneratory sanction—by repaying the slightest favour with unbounded expressions of gratitude—by lavishing upon us such loud and devoted eulogy, as may impress us with his readiness to consecrate to our benefit all the energies of a human being, if we condescend to repeat our kindness. Such are the methods by which he endeavours to magnify and exaggerate the slender bounty which fortune permits him to apply in encouragement of the favours of mankind.

The most copious experience may be adduced in support of these principles. Does the planter, whom the law arms with unlimited power, bestow any eulogy upon his slave, in return for the complete monopoly of his whole life and services? He considers himself as entitled to demand all this, since he possesses the means of extorting its fulfilment. Let us trace the descending scale of power, and mark how the approach of weakness gradually unsheaths the remuneratory sanction. Were his free labourer (particularly in those lands where labour is scarce and highly paid) to work in his page 27 employment with an energy and devotion at all comparable to that which he exacts from his slave, the planter would be prompt in applying the stimulus and encouragement of eulogy. A slighter service, on the part of a friend of equal rank, will draw from him encomiums on the kind and generous temper by which he has benefited. But the merest civility, even a peculiar look or word, bestowed by the king or a superior, is sufficient to impress upon him the deepest esteem and reverence. He loudly extols the gracious deportment of a person upon whom he had no claim, and from whom he could have entertained no expectations.

If any one makes me a present of a considerable sum I magnify his bounty to the skies; I recommend him to the public by all the epithets significant of kindly and beneficent feelings, and thus display the conspicuous return which I am ready to make for such treatment. But let the government grant me a claim upon his estate, however unjustly, and the premium of praise is no longer necessary when I am thus master of the engine of exaction. I no longer therefore bestow upon him by whose labour I profit, those laudatory terms which promise good will on my part. "Is it not enough for him (said Charles I. when the death of Lord Northampton was commended to his sympathy)—Is it not enough that he has died for his king?" So thoroughly is the standing demand which any one makes upon his fellow-creatures, measured by the extent of his compulsory power. It is upon those services only, which overstep this limit, and which he possesses not the means of extorting, that he will expend the tribute of his praise, or waste the incentive which it offers to a future reproduction of favours. Charles I. would not have uttered such a sentence the day before his execution.

With the weak, again, the punitory sanction is completely silenced and annulled. A slave never dreams of announcing dissatisfaction at the conduct of his master. If he did so, the consequence would be an additional infliction of stripes. In despotic governments you hear not a murmur against the oppressor—at least, until excess of suffering produces desperation. The entire extinction of all free sentiment among dependants and courtiers has become proverbial. They dare not express even that indirect and page 28 qualified censure of their superior, which is implied in dissenting from his opinion. They tolerate his insults with a patience and complacency for which they reimburse themselves in their conversation with inferiors. Not only do they abstain from hinting that there is any censurable ingredient in his character, but they dare not even withhold their encomiums, lest they should seem to doubt his exalted merit. It is unnecessary to cite particular instances of a subservience and flattery so notorious.

In proportion as we raise the inferior into equality, his blame becomes more efficacious, and is proclaimed oftener and more freely. Advance him still higher, and his propensity to find fault will be still farther extended, until at last it becomes so excitable and eruptive, as to disregard altogether the feelings of others, and to visit with merciless severity the most trivial defect of conformity to his wishes.

From this examination we may extract some important principles, which will materially elucidate the object of the present inquiry. It appears, first, that the employment of praise or blame bears an exact ratio to the comparative weakness or strength of the critic. Weakness determines praise, strength blame; and the force of either sentiment is measured by the extent of the determining quality. The greater the disparity of power, the more severe is the blame heaped upon the inferior, the more excessive the praise lavished upon the superior. Secondly, the employment of praise and blame is in an inverse ratio to each other. He who praises the most, blames the least; he who blames the most, scarcely praises at all. The man to whom the utmost praise is addressed, seldom hears any blame—and vice versa,. Thirdly, the application of praise and blame bears an inverse ratio to the services performed. The greater the service rendered, the more is the performer of it blamed; the less is he praised. There is no human being from whom the planter derives so much benefit as from his slave; there is none upon whom he expends so little eulogy, or pours so much reproach. On the contrary, it is towards him who has the largest power of inflicting evil upon us, and who confers on us the most insignificant favours, that our encomiums are the warmest, our censure the most gentle page 29 and sparing. A mere intermission of the whip, or perhaps an occasional holiday, will draw forth abundant expression of praise on the part of the slave. How gracious and beneficent is a sovereign styled, by him upon whom he has bestowed a single look of favour! The vehemence of our praise is thus not measured by the extent of the kindness bestowed, but by the superiority of the donor to the receiver, and implies only the dependence and disparity of the latter.

If the foregoing account of praise and blame be correct, it presents an entire solution of the apparent discrepancy which suggested itself at the commencement of the inquiry. It explains how the Deity, although actually conceived (from the mere data of natural religion) as a capricious despot, is yet never described or addressed without the largest and most prodigal encomiums. For where is the case in which so tremendous an exaltation of the agent above the subject can be pointed out? Where is the comparative weakness of the latter so deplorably manifest? The power of which we speak is unlimited, and therefore, with respect to it, we are altogether prostrate and abject. It is, under such circumstances, the natural course, that we should abstain from all disparaging and provocative epithets, and repress every whisper which might indicate a tone of disaffection towards the Omnipotent. "Personne n'aime à prendre une peine inutile, même un enfant," observes Rousseau; and to proclaim an impotent hatred, besides being unmeaning and irrational, might prove positively noxious, by alienating any inclination to benefit us on the part of the Supreme. However painful may be the treatment which we experience at his hands, we must cautiously refrain from pronouncing our genuine sentiments of the injury, inasmuch as such a freedom might prolong or aggravate, but could never extenuate, our sufferings.

The same weakness will give birth to an extravagant and unsparing use of the remuneratory sanction. We know well how little our epithets really signify or promise, since the Deity stands in no need of our good offices; and therefore we endeavour to bestow force upon this host of unmeaning effusions by multiplying its numbers, and by page 30 piling up superlative upon superlative. We magnify the smallest crumb into a splendid benefaction, which merits on our part a return of endless devotion to his service. By thus testifying our own ready subservience—by applying to him terms significant of qualities morally good and beneficial to mankind, and thereby intimating that every one else owes to him a similar gratitude—we hope to constitute something like a motive for repeating the favour. This varied and exuberant flattery is the only mode of soothing the irritability of an earthly despot, and therefore we naturally apply it to one of still more surpassing might.

Suppose that any tyrant could establish so complete a system of espionage, as to be informed of every word which any of his subjects might utter. It is obvious that all criticisms upon him would be laudatory in the extreme, for they would be all pronounced as it were in the presence of the tyrant, and there we know that no one dares to express even dissent of opinion. The unlimited agency of the Deity is equivalent to this universal espionage. He is conceived as the unseen witness of everything which passes our lips—indeed even of our thoughts. It would be madness, therefore, to hazard an unfavourable judgment of his proceedings, while thus constantly under his supervision.

It seems, therefore, sufficiently demonstrated, that the same incomprehensible power, which would cause the Deity to be conceived as a capricious despot, would also occasion him to be spoken of only under titles of the loftiest eulogy. For language is not the sign of the idea actually existing in the mind of the speaker—but of that which he desires to convey to the hearer. In the present case these two ideas are completely at variance, as they must uniformly be where there is an excessive disparity of power.

It has been necessary to pursue the inquiry into the character of the Deity, as pourtrayed by natural religion, to a length which may possibly seem tedious. But as the rule of conduct, to which natural religion applies her inducements, depends altogether on the conceptions framed of the invisible governor of a posthumous existence—it is of the highest moment to lay bare the actual conceptions of him, page 31 in order to ascertain whether a behaviour adjusted according to them will be beneficial or injurious to mankind.

Since the dispositions of the Deity are, in this unenlightened condition, supposed to be thus capricious and incomprehensible, it may seem extraordinary that mankind should have attempted to assign to them a definite boundary, by marking out any line of conduct as agreeable or disagreeable to him.

But the fact is, that the terms incomprehensible and unlimited are merely negative, and therefore have no positive meaning whatever: Their actual import is, that the Deity is a being of whom we know less, and who has more power, than any other. We conceive him as differing only in degree from other possessors of power, and we therefore assimilate him the most closely to those earthly sovereigns in whom the most irresistible might resides.

We are thus furnished with a clue to the actions which unassisted natural religion will represent as agreeable and odious to the Deity. Experience announces to us what practices will recommend us to the favour of terrestrial potentates, and what will provoke their enmity. From this analogy (the nearest we can attain upon the subject) will be copied the various modes of behaviour which the Deity is imagined to favour or abominate. To pursue the former course and avoid the latter, will be the directive rule to which the inducements of natural religion affix themselves. This directive rule will indeed ramify into many accidental shapes, among different nations; but its general tenour and spirit will, throughout, be governed by the analogy just mentioned, since that is our nearest resource and substitute in the total silence of experience.

The central passion in the mind of a despot is an insatiate love of dominion, and thirst for its increase. All his approbation and disapprobation, all his acts of reward and punishment, are wholly dictated by this master-principle. I state this in a broad and unqualified manner; but I feel warranted by the amplest evidence, and by the concurrent testimony of political writers, almost all of whom stigmatize in the harshest language the unbridled government of a single man.

Pursuing this clue, it will not be difficult to distinguish page 32 those characters which he will mark out as estimable or hateful. The foremost in his estimation will be that man who most essentially contributes to the maintenance of his power: the greatest object of his hatred will be he who most eminently threatens its annihilation. Next in the catalogue of merit will be inserted the person who can impress upon his mind, in the most vivid and forcible manner, the delicious conviction of his supremacy—who can rekindle this association continually, and strike out new modes of application to prevent it from subsiding into indifference. Next in the list of demerit will appear the name of him, whose conduct tends to invalidate this consciousness of overwhelming might—whose open defiance or tardy conformity generates mistrust and apprehension—I or who, at least, can contemplate with an unterrified and uninfluenced eye the whole apparatus of majesty. Such will be the most eminent subjects, both of favour and disgrace, on the part of the despot.

In all cases where the gratification of his love of power is allied with the happiness of his subjects, qualities conducive to that happiness will recommend themselves to his patronage. But it is a melancholy truth, that this coincidence seldom, we might say never, occurs. He who is thus absorbed in love of dominion, cannot avoid loving the correlative and inseparable event—the debasement of those over whom he rules; in order that his own supremacy may I become more pointed and prominent. Of course he also has an interest in multiplying their privations, which are the symptoms and measure of that debasement. Besides, his leading aim is to diffuse among his subjects the keenest impressions of his own power. This is, in other words, to plant in their bosoms an incessant feeling of helplessness, insecurity and fear; and were this aim realized, everything which deserves the name of happiness must, throughout their lives, be altogether overshadowed and stifled.

Doubtless there will be occasions on which the view of prosperity will gratify him. Such will be the case when it is strongly associated with the exercise of his own creative fiat—and when its dependence upon and derivation from himself, is so glaring as to blazon forth conspicuously the majesty of the donor. In order thus to affect the public page 33 mind, his benefits must be rare in their occurrence, bestowed only on a few, and concentrated into striking and ostentatious masses. All the prosperity, therefore, in which he will take an interest will be that of a few favourites; his own work achieved by the easy process of donation. This munificence of temper, however, is not only not coincident with the happiness of the community, but is altogether hostile to it. The former, because the real welfare of the many is to be secured not by occasional fits of kindness, but by the slow and unobtrusive effect of systematic regulations, built upon this study of human nature, discoverable only by patient thought, and requiring perpetual watchfulness in their application: The latter, because these donatives are at the bottom mere acts of spoliation, snatching away the labours of the many for the benefit of a favoured few.

It thus plainly appears that the despot can never derive any pleasure from the genuine well being of the community, though he may at times gratify himself by exalting individuals to sudden pre-eminence over the rest. Consequently the qualities conducive to the happiness of the community will not meet with the smallest encouragement from him. They will even be discouraged, indirectly at least, by the preference shown to other qualities not contributory to this end. But the personal affections of the despot have been shown to lead, in almost all cases, to the injury of the people. And therefore those mental habits, which tend to gratify these affections, will be honoured with his unqualified approval; those which tend to frustrate them, will incur his detestation. In the former catalogue will be comprised all the qualities which lessen and depress human happiness; in the latter, all which foster and improve it.

Such is the scale according to which the praise and censure, the rewards and punishments, of the earthly potentate, will be dispensed. By this model, the nearest which experience presents, the conceptions of mankind must be guided, in conjecturing the character and inclinations of the Deity.

The first place in the esteem of the Deity will, in pursuance of this analogy, be allotted to those who disseminate his influence among men—who are most effectually em- page 34 ployed in rendering his name dreaded and reverenced, and enforcing the necessity of perpetual subjection to him. Priests, therefore, whose lives are devoted to this object, will be regarded as the most favoured class.

The largest measure of his hate will in like manner be supposed to devolve on those who attempt to efface these apprehensions, and to render mankind independent of him, by removing the motives for their subjection. The most decisive way of effecting this is by presuming to call in question his existence—an affront of peculiar poignancy, to which the material despot is not exposed. Atheists, therefore, will be the persons whom he is imagined to view with the most signal abomination.

Immediately beneath the priests will be placed those who manifest the deepest and most permanent sense of his agency and power—in words, by the unceasing use of hyperbole, to extol the Deity and depress themselves—in action, by abstaining on his account from agreeable occupations, and performing ceremonies which can be ascribed to no other motive than the desire of pleasing him. Works, which can be ascribed to this motive alone, must from their very nature produce no good at all, or at least very little: for were they thus beneficial, they would be recompensed with the esteem and gratitude of mankind, and the performer of them might be suspected of having originally aimed at this independent advantage. Whereas he who whips himself every night, or prefaces every mouthful with a devotional formula, can hardly be supposed to have contemplated the smallest temporal profit, or to have had any other end in view, than that of pleasing the Deity. Such actions will be thought to convey to him the liveliest testimony of his own unparalleled influence, and the performers of them will be placed second in the scale of merit.

Next to Atheists, his highest displeasure will be conceived to attach to those who either avowedly brave his power, or tacitly slight and disregard it—who indulge in language of irreverent censure, or withhold the daily offering of their homage and prostration—who dwell careless of his supremacy, and decline altogether the endurance of privations from which no known benefit, either to themselves or page 35 others, can arise. Such persons assume an independence which silently implies that the arm of the Deity is shortened and cannot reach them; and they will, therefore, be considered as the next objects of his indignation.

These then are the qualities, which the natural religionist, guided by the experience of temporal potentates, will imagine the Deity to favour or dislike. To this extraneous directive rule, therefore, the inducements of natural religion, and the expectations of a posthumous life, will apply themselves. Nor can we doubt, for an instant, that such a rule is highly detrimental to human happiness in this life.

It cannot be otherwise, so long as nothing more is known of the Deity except that he possesses a superhuman power, and that we cannot understand his course of action. It is the essence of power to exact obedience; and obedience involves privation and suffering on the part of the inferior. The Deity having power over all mankind, exacts an obedience co-extensive with his power; therefore all mankind must obey him, or, in other words, immolate to his supremacy a certain portion of their happiness. He loves human obedience; that is, he is delighted with human privations and pain, for these are the test and measure of obedience. He is pleased, when his power is felt and acknowledged: That is, he delights to behold a sense of abasement, helplessness, and terror, prevalent among mankind. If, under the earthly despot, rewards and punishments are undeniably distributed in a manner injurious to human happiness—under the God of unassisted natural religion, whose attributes must be borrowed from the despot, the case must be similar. There is indeed this difference which deserves to be remarked, that those deductions from human happiness which the temporal potentate requires, are altogether unproductive and final: While those exacted by the Deity, though embracing the very same period, are in comparison transient and preparatory, entitling the contracting party to the amplest posthumous reimbursement. In the former case, the expenditure of suffering is a dead loss; in the latter, it is a judicious surrender of present, in expectation of future, advantages.

But it may be urged in opposition, that the Deity is like page 36 a beneficent judge, and not like a despot—that he fetters individual taste no farther than is necessary for the happiness of the whole. Revelation may doubtless thus characterize him; but natural religion can never portray him under this amiable aspect. His power is irresistible, and therefore all limitations of it must be voluntary and self-imposed. How then can we venture to assume, that he will exact from individuals no more self-denial than is requisite for the benefit of the whole, unless it shall please him specially to communicate to us his recognition of such a boundary? We cannot possibly know what boundary he will select, until he informs us. Prior to revelation, therefore, the Deity can be conceived as nothing else but a despot—that is, the possessor of unrestricted sway. To compare him with a beneficent judge, is an analogy wholly fallacious and inadmissible. Why is the judge beneficent? Because his power is derivative, dependent and responsible. Why does he impose upon individuals no farther sacrifices than are necessary to ensure the well being of the society? Because all the compulsory force which he can employ is borrowed from the society, who will not permit it to be used for other purposes. Suppose these circumstances altered, and that the judge possesses himself of independent unresponsible power: The result is, that he becomes a despot, and ceases altogether to be beneficent. It is only when thus strengthened and unshackled that he becomes a proper object of comparison with the Deity—and then, instead of a judge, he degenerates invariably into an oppressor and a tyrant.

Amongst other expressions of reverence towards the Deity, doubtless the appellation of a judge, one of the most adorable functions which can grace humanity, will not be omitted. But we have already shown that the language of praise is not on this occasion to be considered as indicating the existence of truly valuable qualities in the object. Because that immensity of power, which is the distinguishing attribute of the Deity, distorts the epithets of eulogy, and terrifies us into an offer of them, by way of propitiation, whether deserved or not by any preceding service.

It seems clear then from the foregoing inquiry, that the posthumous hopes and fears held out by natural religion, page 37 must produce the effect of encouraging actions useless and pernicious to mankind, but agreeable to the invisible Dispenser, so far as his attributes are discoverable by unaided natural religion—and our conceptions of his character, are the only evidence on which we can even build a conjecture as to the conduct which may entail upon us posthumous happiness or misery. Whatever offers an encouragement to useless or pernicious conduct, operates indirectly to discourage that which is beneficial and virtuous. In addition, therefore, to the positive evil which these inducements force into existence of themselves, they are detrimental in another way, by stifling the growth of genuine excellence, and diverting the recompence which should be exclusively reserved for it.